Leading U.S. environmental groups today sent a letter to President Obama urging him to resist the aviation industry’s calls to block a European law that limits pollution from aviation.

Environmental groups called on President Obama today to lead a global effort to "craft a meaningful global approach on aviation carbon pollution." (White House photo credit: Flickr user LollyKnit)

The European law is the only program in the world that sets enforceable limits on carbon emissions from aviation; that pollution is growing so quickly, it's projected to quadruple from 2005 levels by 2050 if left unregulated.

But the aviation industry has been calling for the U.S. government to block the law by bringing a so-called “Article 84” international legal case in the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO).

The letter, signed by 15 environmental groups and the U.S. Climate Action Network, which represents more than 80 U.S. environmental groups and millions of members, said filing such a formal proceeding to block the law

would be highly inconsistent with your Administration’s efforts to reduce carbon pollution from other sources, and would undermine your Administration’s stated goal of achieving an agreed framework in ICAO to limit global warming pollution from international aviation …

[C]alls for such a proceeding must be viewed for what they truly are: not an effort to improve ICAO’s odds of achieving a global solution, but rather a means of reducing the likelihood that ICAO takes meaningful action on carbon pollution from international aviation – while simultaneously obviating the world’s only program that is now actually doing so. In short, an Article 84 proceeding is at base a transparent effort to allow airlines to evade responsibility for their carbon pollution in perpetuity …

[Y]our Administration should lead the effort in ICAO to craft a meaningful global approach on aviation carbon pollution, working together with airlines and civil society.